


It Goes Without Saying

by DiscontentedWinter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Danny Mahealani Finds Out, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, Origin Story, fandomcares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 21:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15649188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: Danny and Jackson don't talk about some things. That just means they go without saying.





	It Goes Without Saying

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MidnightHarlow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightHarlow/gifts).



> This is a piece written for Midnight Harlow, for Fandom Cares. Thank you for bidding on me, and I hope you like the story!

Danny Mahealani is seven years old when he gets his first laptop. His cousin Makani gives it to him when Danny and his parents leave Hilo and move to Beacon Hills. It’s Makani’s old laptop, and the case is scuffed, but nobody has ever given Danny such an amazing present before. Makani says they can use it so they can still talk to each other on Skype when Danny is living so far away. They move to Beacon Hills over the summer when school is out and Danny doesn’t know anybody, so he spends a lot of time on the computer.

It turns out Danny’s very good at figuring out computer things.

Beacon Hills is a small town in northern California. Danny isn’t used to how cool the wind is, even in summer. In the Preserve, under the shade off all the pines, it’s almost _cold_. Danny misses Hilo, and the way the air smelled like salt, and the breeze was as warm as a friendly touch. Something about the Preserve makes him nervous. When he looks into the trees it feels like something is looking back.

On his first day at Beacon Hills Elementary School, Danny meets Jackson Whittemore. Their teacher makes Jackson sit next to Danny and be the one to show him around the school. They’re seven, and it’s easy. Later, years later, Danny wonders if he would have become best friends with whoever Mr. Taylor picked to sit beside him that day. It seems strange that a thing like that just came down to chance.

Jackson is there when Danny’s parents get divorced and his dad goes back to Hilo.

He’s there when Danny’s mom remarries and for the first time Danny realizes that big men with big hands don’t mean safety.

He’s there when Danny starts angling for more and more sleepovers, and he doesn’t ask why. Sometimes Danny thinks he can see the question in Mrs. Whittemore’s slightly pinched expression as she pours them cereal in the mornings—Danny stayed over _again_?—but she doesn’t ask. And Danny is so grateful for that.

Jackson isn’t good with computers, not like Danny is, but his parents are rich and he always gets the best and the newest gadgets as soon as they’re on the market, and Danny gets what he doesn’t need anymore. Jackson usually just clears out his closet, eyes rolling, and tosses Danny his old stuff. Sometimes it’s only months old too, not years. It doesn’t make Danny feel bad, because Jackson says otherwise he’d just throw it all in the trash.

It takes Danny years to see that Jackson only knows how to be generous in this very specific way. Like it’s a secret he has to hide by pretending it’s Danny doing him the favor. Jackson is brittle in ways that it takes Danny a long time to understand.

They don’t talk about it, but it’s understood.

Just like they don’t talk about Danny’s step-dad, but it’s understood.

Jackson decides Danny will stay over most nights, and gets pissed if he doesn’t. And Danny pretends that he’s too easy-going to resist Jackson’s demands on his time.

They don’t talk about it. Danny thinks that if they did, the whole thing might crumble.

Sometimes, Danny’s mom gets upset if he doesn’t sleep at home. The window in Danny’s bedroom overlooks the dead end of their street, which backs onto a vacant block of land. Behind that are the trees of the Preserve. Danny stays awake at night listening to the sounds in the darkness: the squeak of the floorboards as the house shifts in the cooler air, the low moan on the wind outside, and the tap-tap-tap of the branch against the siding near his window. When the full moon shines down, Danny watches the shadows slip through the trees of the Preserve, and the shadows watch him back.

Danny wonders if those things out in the darkness are awake because their chests ache as well.

One night he slips out the back door and walks toward the trees. He isn’t afraid. He feels the moonlight on his skin, and closes his eyes, and imagines a warm breeze and the taste of salt on his lips.

Whatever is out here in the darkness, it’s safer than what waits at home: a loud voice, a short fuse, and big hands that clench into big fists. Danny stands and stares into the Preserve for what might be hours before he finally walks back to his house.

In the morning, there are paw prints in the soft, damp earth under his window, and a smooth, shiny stone that something carried and left there like a gift. Danny puts it on his desk beside his laptop.

After the fire at the Hale house, Danny doesn’t find any more paw prints.

Everyone has secrets. Danny does, and Jackson does, and the Hales did, and Beacon Hills takes them and wraps them in dew-damp air and buries them deep under the sighing wind and the shuddering pines.

Everyone has secrets.

When Danny is fourteen he’s diagnosed with _pectus excavatum_. It means the cartilage in his ribs is growing wrong, pushing inward on his heart and his lungs. It’s a thing that can sometimes just happen. Sometimes it happens for a reason too.

All those times Danny’s felt like his chest was caving in, and it hurt to breathe, and his heart ached...turns out it wasn’t just hyperbole.

Jackson visits him in hospital, looking bored. He brings Danny an iPad that’s not even out of its packaging yet.

“It’s a piece of crap,” he says, tossing it onto Danny’s bed. “I told them I wanted space gray, not silver. How hard is that to remember?”

The nurse changing Danny’s IV looks at Jackson with disgust, but she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t know what this is.

When Danny comes out of hospital, he has pieces of metal inside him that are to stop his ribs from crushing his heart, but Danny knows that long before that metal there was something else, someone else, that did the same thing.

He goes to school again as soon as his doctor says he can.

“Hey,” Jackson says, and peels himself off the pole he’s been leaning against. He rolls his eyes when Scott and Stiles scurry past, Stiles flailing like always. “It’s about time you got back. You’re sleeping at my place tonight. We’re having pizza. Don’t be late.”

He doesn’t ask. He never does, because it doesn’t work like that.

Danny smiles his old, easy smile, his now-protected heart swelling with warmth, and walks up the steps with Jackson at his side.


End file.
